The sudden explosion in the availability of AI-powered content creation tools has caused shockwaves to reverberate across all sorts of industries. In particular, it’s people who have developed writing skills and formed careers around expressing themselves through language that is seemingly the most vulnerable to the rise of ChatGPT and its contemporaries.
However, if you dig a little deeper it’s clear we’re not experiencing the death of writing as a marketable skill or a worthy pursuit, whether for professional purposes or simply for pleasure. Instead, we’re witnessing the dawning of a new era in which writers and AI tools can work in unison.
To prove this, let’s talk about the areas in which flesh and blood wordsmiths still come out on top when compared with ChatGPT, and why this isn’t likely to change any time soon.
Crafting Engaging Content With Empathy & Creativity
Put simply, creating content requires more than just stringing together a few words by regurgitating and reinterpreting vast volumes of existing text, which is effectively how AI tools function. Instead, it’s about understanding your audience and crafting messages that will engage them on a deeper, more human level which in turn makes them loyal.
Writers have the empathy and creativity to identify with readers as individuals and as groups, allowing them to create stories, copywriting techniques, or PR tactics and strategies tailored specifically to their target market. By leveraging empathy in storytelling, as well as adopting creative approaches for persuasive writing, humans are still using language in a way that’s more honest, genuine, and meaningful to all sorts of audiences.
ChatGPT can be a helpful tool for writers, but it is important to remember that it is not a replacement for human connection. Professional Wikipedia writers, for example, use their relationships with other Wikipedia editors to collaborate on articles and improve the quality of Wikipedia. If you are interested in incorporating Chat GPT into your writing process, learning how to use Chat GPT effectively can enhance your creative output.
Editing, Proofreading & Quality Control
Writing is rewriting, as the old saying goes. And while ChatGPT seems superficially capable of creating content from basic prompts, it has yet to escape the uncanny valley issue which also impacts other AI tools, such as those focused on image generation.
Human writers have an eye for detail that goes beyond just grammar corrections. They can spot typos and root out the undeniably awkward phrasing that artificially intelligent solutions often deploy. They can also provide feedback on content structure and formatting, which is difficult to achieve with automated tools.
With all these skills combined, human writers offer invaluable support in producing high-quality content, both for marketing purposes and for all sorts of other uses, whether that’s in the print media, online or anywhere else.
Nurturing Sales Conversions Through Storytelling
Earlier we touched on how having a narrative in place makes a difference in terms of the amount of engagement that’s generated through marketing copy. This is something that a product marketing company like storysells.com appreciates, and it is only truly achievable when the person in charge is just that; a person.
Once again the issue is the idea that creativity is not something you can conjure up using an algorithm. There’s that ineffable spark that only comes from the way our brain chemistry works.
Sure, the first time you ask ChatGPT to come up with a story based on a particular set of parameters, it will seem impressive. But the more you use it, the more this is revealed as a party trick rather than a real replication of what human writers can do.
When it comes to selling to a particular audience, writers are just better at working out how to tell a story that feels fresh and relevant, not the same reheated, reworked sentences spat out by AI tools. And of course, when it comes to keeping clients onboard, that’s key.
Spinning News to Get to the Heart of Public Relations Issues
Another area in which we can be confident that writers will be relevant regardless of how advanced ChatGPT becomes is that of PR. In this context, the core duty of a professional writer is to put a spin on news stories or other industry topics, making them more interesting and engaging, while still conveying accurate information.
With years of experience and that irreplaceable skill for finding original angles, human PR pros can craft messages that will not only educate readers but also inspire action. And of course this is where PR is at its most potent; not just getting people to absorb information passively, but drawing them in and orchestrating what they do next.
In addition to crafting content tailored for each platform, experienced public relations professionals know exactly what kind of language resonates best with various target markets, which is another essential aspect of connecting with audiences. Start to read enough AI-generated copy, on the other hand, and you’ll quickly see that it tends to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach, not only to language choice, but tone.
Avoiding the Drawback of Confident Lying
In the past few months, many news stories of AI tools generating problematic text have hit the headlines. This is significant for several reasons, not least of which because it shows that humans have to oversee this technology’s use to avoid potentially dangerous scenarios.
For example, ask ChatGPT for homemade recipes for dog treats and it’s likely that the suggestions you’ll receive will include ingredients that are known to be toxic to our four-legged friends. Worse still, the assured tone that this tool adopts means that credulous users might simply assume that its apparent all-knowingness means that it’s entirely infallible, and would take the content at face value without fact-checking it.
For businesses that want to steer clear of this type of scenario, examples of which appear across almost every industry niche, using human writers for content marketing, copywriting and PR will be a must to ensure accuracy, and avoid negative repercussions.
Key Takeways
There’s no question that ChatGPT is immensely useful as a way of making life easier for writers, but it is very much a tool that they can harness like any other, rather than an outright replacement for their abilities. So if you’re thinking of developing writing skills of your own, then the good news is that this is very much a specialism that’s alive and well.
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